Earlier this month, Marvel released a Guardians of the Galaxy mixtape loaded with tunes from the '70s that will also serve as half of the film's soundtrack. It really helps set the tone for the film, so we asked director James Gunn to do the same thing with movies people should watch.

This is just a small segment of our upcoming interview with James Gunn — but we had to share now, so you can get Netflixin'.

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io9: You released part of the soundtrack before the premiere and it sort of preps you to see this movie. Do you have a list of '80s and '70s movies that audiences should watch to get ready for Guardians of the Galaxy?

James Gunn: The movies that were most inspirational to Guardians are those movies that I loved as a kid. Whether it's Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars or Back to the Future. I wanted to make a movie that wasn't necessarily like those films but that made people feel like those films made me feel as a child — can make people feel like that whether they're an adult or a child.

There are millions. But the influences are so wide. 2001, you may not think it, that movie seems nothing like Guardians of the Galaxy but in a lot of the ways, the way we shot some things the way we dealt with some stuff it as a huge influence.

The Right Stuff was probably the movie we referenced more than any other on set, because we really wanted the feel of those old spacecraft [in] our spacecraft, to make them feel real and grounded. Both in their design and the way they move, the way they interacted with the atmosphere when they are outside.

The Dirty Dozen was a movie that was really inspirational and influenced us a lot.

In some ways more than others, the films of Sergio Leone. Once Upon A Time In The West, The Good the Bad and the Ugly those movies were inspirational not only from a camera standpoint, [but because] I really admire what he does. But I also liked they way that he worked with Ennio Morricone, the composer who wrote music for those movies, before they shot and they moved to that music on set. And we did that with Tyler Bates, our composer, who composed the majority of the score before we shot it.